Open Software Competition Nepal 2009 (OSCN) organized the first of its training sessions for its participants on March 7, 2009. The participants were divided into two groups and each group had three sessions. The trainings concerned OSS (Open Source Software) and OSCN overview, project management and a D2Labs platform walk through.

The training kicked off with Bhaskar Bhattarai talking about problems in current software industry. The session focused on professional software development methodology. Dhilung took over from Bhaskar and started hands on training on usage of D2Labs.The OSS overview, given by CTO Dr. Rudra Pandey, VP Himal Karmacharya and DOE Sajan Sangraula, had all participants together on D2HawkeyeServices premises. Rudra Pandey impressed upon the listeners how the world was drifting towards a more open standards in the software industry. He further stressed the importance of collaborative development in days ahead. Himal Karmacharya gave a brief history of FOSS and a unique view into the actual movement, having seen it up close. Sajan Sangraula explained the nuances of Web 2.0 and encouraged participants to follow similar principles in their projects. He further stressed how Nepalese engineers are not at a disadvantage, given how many of the applications in use today have come out of innocuous places, not just the technologically advanced countries.

The post lunch session had another intelligent rendition of project management overview. Its USP, and a point that the participants themselves pointed out, was that it was interactive. As the session rolled out, Shankar Sharma explained pitfalls of various projects.

Overall, software engineering principles and their hands on experience was shared in this session. During the D2Labs walk through, the participants were shown how to setup their projects to receive members and to advertise positions; how the coordinator could accept and reject projects. The participants were shown the usage of the forums and tracker items. The version control tools had the audience enamored to say the least. That they could revert the source to a workable format after some incorrect experimentation was appraised quite widely.

Feedback was collected from some participants and some excerpts are enlisted herewith.

Prabin:

OSCN-09 has created a great environment for Open Source Enthusiasts in Nepal. We expect this challenge to create a platform for “Create, share and collaborate …..We believe that D2 labs platform would be a nice way to start “FOSS for enterprises in Nepal.”

LMS Using Barcode Group:

We expect to learn more about open source, and about the D2Labs developing platform. We hope to learn about the trend of Software Development in Nepal.

J Bookshop RMI:

Nepal is the neighbour of a major outsourcing power, India. But, due to many problems, we have not been able to take full advantage of it. There are limited international standard IT companies, and opportunities are rare…. We learned about the contest through exhibition and expect to learn newer ideas from today’s sessions.

Rajendra Banepali:

It’s a good initiative and impressive mission for Nepalese developers. Technologically D2 is very good and I found the lecture of Mr. Rudra a privilege too.

Anjan Nepal:

Today’ program was very useful in introducing services of D2Labs, and about its various features…. I hope to use what I learned in developing my project also.

Participants are clamoring for another training, especially pertaining to SVN management in all their Feedback.

Report : AshayT

Photo: DhilungK, BhaskarB

CreativeSupport: PallaviS